Matthew Desmond is a renowned sociologist and the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. He is also the Principal Investigator of The Eviction Lab and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. Desmond's academic journey began with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2010, followed by a fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows as a Junior Fellow.

His research and teaching interests span urban sociology, poverty, race and ethnicity, organizations and work, social theory, and ethnography. Desmond has authored several significant works, including On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters (2007), Race in America (with Mustafa Emirbayer, 2015), The Racial Order (with Mustafa Emirbayer, 2015), and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016), which won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

In addition to his books, Desmond has contributed to the academic field with essays on educational inequality, dangerous work, political ideology, race and social theory, and the housing market. His recent publications explore the prevalence and consequences of eviction and the low-income rental market, survival strategies among the urban poor, and the impact of crime control policies on inner-city women.

Desmond's work has been published in prestigious journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Demography. In 2015, he was awarded the prestigious MacArthur "Genius" grant, recognizing his groundbreaking contributions to sociology.